


What to do with Eternity?

by Kalpana



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale & Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Constantinople, First Kiss, History, India, Ineffable Bureaucracy (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Literature, M/M, Memories, Memory Loss, Nonbinary Beelzebub (Good Omens), Other, POV Beelzebub, POV Gabriel, Pining, Protective Gabriel, Wine, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-07-20 05:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19987048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalpana/pseuds/Kalpana
Summary: Armageddon didn't happen. Aziraphale and Crowley weren't destroyed. Gabriel has to make sense of it all and decide what to do from then on, for the rest of Eternity. He recalls his relationship with Aziraphale, as well as Aziraphale's relationship with Crowley and his own dealings with Beelzebub across the ages. Gabriel decides on a course of action, but he has a negotiation to do first in a vintage bookshop in Soho.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't exactly the fic I was planning to write, but I started thinking about Gabriel and how he must have felt about the whole non-Apocalypse thing, and there it was. Also, I'm not an English native speaker, so please bear with the mistakes. This is a work in progress, and as far as I know, there will be a second chapter, if not a third.
> 
> *Just published the fourth one, I'm foreseeing six chapters!

Aziraphale was the perfect angel for the job. If he hadn’t known better, Gabriel might have thought that God made Aziraphale for Earth duty. The Guardian of the Eastern Gate had never been any good at guarding anything, as history had made painfully clear, nor had he been of any use in Heaven. He was, however, perfectly suited for Earth’s observation and inspiration of faith, virtuousness and good deeds among humans, and he was perfectly happy with the job too. What other angel could – or would – bear staying among humans for so long? Certainly not Michael, who would have done something terribly ridiculous as well as pompous to get humans to adore him, nor Sandalphon, who would have smitten and destroyed cities at the slightest whiff of sin, and certainly not him, Gabriel thought.

Yes, there was no doubt about it, Aziraphale’s performance was outstanding. No one could replace him and be expected to do as well as he did. However, there was a trace, not of doubt, but of… inconvenience. A shadow that almost eclipsed his brilliance. At first, it had been a minor setback, easily resolved with a cleansing of memories and some corrective therapy. After all, one could hardly expect an angel, staying for so long on Earth, having to battle face to face with evil for thousands of years, not having some of that rubbed off on him. But the shadow kept appearing, tarnishing the angel’s impeccable record, and he, Gabriel, kept dealing with it.

Hell wasn’t as inefficient and dull as they were made to believe in Heaven. Of course they had sent their best asset to the field. Gabriel was quite sure that that demon, what was the name, Crowley, wasn’t it? had been as useless in Hell as Aziraphale had been in Heaven. That his talents only came to fruition when he arrived on Earth. It had been made abundantly clear that the demon was a wily adversary for their celestial agent.

Gabriel shuffled carefully the set of pictures he had spread over his desk, pictures that Michael had unearthed from the Observation Files and showed him with a smirk over Aziraphale’s disgraceful friendship with a demon. The pictures showed the angel and the demon watching a play at The Globe, feeding the ducks at St. James’ Park, dining at the Ritz, wandering about an art gallery talking animatedly, together in a garden around a child. Michael had assumed that he, Gabriel, didn’t know anything about it, and prided himself for the discovery. He let him be, of course – if Michael had learned that the knowledge of the relationship had been hidden from him for centuries, he would have become unbearably piqued.

As he arranged the pictures in a neat heap on the table, Gabriel stood up slowly and walked towards the window. His office was located high up in Heaven, with an astonishing view of Earth’s most important places. But he was not enjoying the view today. In fact, in the last week it had been very difficult to enjoy anything. Now that there wouldn’t be any war at all, he had had to appease millions of wrathful angels who had been ready to fight, their spirits aroused with the intoxication of what they saw as the final victory. He had seen the bright eyes of battalion after battalion of angels looking at him in disbelief, shock and, what was worse, doubt. Fortunately, they had only doubted him so far – at least, their faith in the Almighty had remained steady. For how long, he couldn’t say. Heaven had been covered by dark clouds since the day the Apocalypse didn’t happen, and the weather had been rather dull and chilly. He could see his reflection on the window: hair unkempt, dark circles, wrinkled forehead. He tried to smile, but all he could muster made his expression even worse with disappointment and disaffection. The sky got a little darker.

He had had to speak with the Metatron too, of course, to inform the Almighty that the Apocalypse had been ineffably averted. That hadn’t been a pleasant meeting. The Metatron was furious, and addressed him with harsh words for the first time ever. He left with a sharp sound that, hadn’t it come from the Voice of Almighty himself, reminded Gabriel of the start of a whimper. The conversation had ended abruptly without giving him any instructions. What was he to do now? What were all of them going to do for the rest of Eternity? How were they all going to cope if She didn’t say anything? Were they supposed to behave as if nothing had happened?

But, oh, things had happened. The non-Apocalypse was one thing, but the almost-execution of another angel had been something else entirely. He had to admit he had been furious too. Everything until then was going on schedule, the gears of time synced perfectly with every prophecy, every revelation, every instruction given by Her. Who was this stupid soft angel to put a stop to it all? Well, it had been Adam who put a stop to it, but they couldn’t judge the Antichrist, could they? Someone had to pay.

It wasn’t often that Heaven and Hell saw eye to eye, but this occasion had been one of them. Communication was established and a plan had been elaborated swiftly. It hadn’t been like that before. Gabriel remembered the first time he had met Beelzebub. It had been in Byzantium, or was it Constantinople? Human names change so fast! Aziraphale had been there on orders to influence the Emperor towards goodness and Christianity, while the demon had been sent to make sure the Emperor maintained his paganism, kept killing his relatives in horrible ways and to instigate awful monetary reforms that made social inequalities widen.

Constantinople was then the place to be on Earth, from a human point of view of course. The most civilized city of the world. “Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.” It was one of Aziraphale’s favorite human writers who had said it, Wilderness, wasn’t it? Definitely true. Both the angel and the demon were excelling at their attempts to civilize Constantinople, or so they all thought back then, Heaven and Hell, before discovering they had been actually busy doing things _other_ than inspiring and corrupting _humans._

Aziraphale had been slacking, the paperwork hadn’t been done on time. That’s how he noticed. It wasn’t Aziraphale’s style to slack. Sloth was unbecoming of an angel. He knew the angel had some issues with gluttony, but that was inconspicuous, given his brilliant performance. He sent a note, not rude but definitely stern. When an entire week had gone by without reply, he began to wonder if something was off. What could have happened to the angel? He could have miracled himself out of any trouble. Gabriel decided to take the matter into his own hands, and went down to Earth. There was no need to broadcast the information that an angel had got into trouble on Earth. Those would have been scary news in Heaven.

So Gabriel corporated on Earth at Aziraphale’s place. It was night time. The small house was closed and silent, as if empty. He miracled the door open and stepped in. Then he saw her. Beelzebub. Small and dark, flies buzzing around her head as planets around the sun. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but thought it better to keep silent. She lifted a finger to her mouth, indicating him to do the same. Gabriel nodded, and gestured a “why?” with his broad shoulders. Beelzebub blinked lazily and pointed towards a curtain hanging over an arch, hiding from view the room behind it.

She walked lightly towards it, and pulled the curtain to the side, revealing the reason why they shouldn’t speak.

In the tiny room, on the wooden frame of a bed, two bodies lied together, snuggled together, covered by white cotton linens. Their breathing was calm, in sync, and their faces were peaceful, their eyes closed, a hint of a smile on their mouths, as if they were seeing lovely things in their dreams. Gabriel was flooded with a sense of happiness and love, and then he felt horrified. He looked at Beelzebub, who was aghast and clearly nauseated. As she turned her gaze to Gabriel, she snapped her fingers, and disappeared along with the demon. Back to Hell, he thought. Looking at Aziraphale sleeping peacefully – he made a mental note to investigate the angel’s ability to sleep – he did the same, and miracled them both back to Heaven.

Gabriel paced up and down his spacious office. This last time had been so different. Constantinople had been the first time he saw Beelzebub, but there had been many more. Not that they were actually meeting, anyway. They had a job to do – Gabriel was unsure of how Beelzebub managed her demon, but he suspected she had come to very similar conclusions as he had, since Crowley was still assigned to Earth duty, and as it was always Beelzebub who came to pick him up. They just happened to materialize on Earth at the same time. Roughly. Once he had to wait a full hour before Beelzebub appeared to pick up her demon – he had sat uncomfortably at the lobby of the hotel where Aziraphale and Crowley were lodged, and picked up a human newspaper out of curiosity and boredom. Their timing definitely had nothing to do with an aftertaste of coal, cinders and burnt oil he could feel near the Earth globe, so similar to Beelzebub’s scent. She and Gabriel just went to Earth at the best moment possible for their objective, and it was the same because their problem was exactly the same.

At first, he had no idea of what to do. He couldn’t possibly let anyone else know. How would Heaven react if they learnt that an angel and a demon had been… consorting? Was that even possible? Aziraphale had been their best agent on Earth. All the others sent there at the beginning had to be recalled. They had got either too close to humans, violating God’s orders and profaning Her creation; or they had been completely unable to empathize with humans and influence them in any way other than fear. Humans even mistook them for demons! No, Aziraphale had to be salvaged, so that Heaven’s plans for Earth could have any chance of success.

Once that goal was established, he had to decide how to confront Aziraphale. How to...deal with… what happened and how to… convince him that… he could not… do it again. But, how to talk about it? What words could he use to refer to… what he saw, what he felt, what he had started to imagine that happened…. Gabriel had seen Adam and Eve in the Garden. Aziraphale had been there too. Watching.

Oh, God.

In the end, Gabriel decided that the best course of action was not to talk about it, but to erase Aziraphale’s memories. He would enter the angel’s soul and cleanse it from the demon. It was easier said than done. He hadn’t been prepared for the intensity of Aziraphale’s feelings. Nevertheless, he got the job done, he was not one to back off his responsibility. It was all his fault, he thought while he searched for memories of the demon in Aziraphale’s soul. He hadn’t watched over the angel as he should have. Gabriel loathed Earth, and he was not eager to spend any time at all among humans or beasts, if he could avoid it. He would communicate more with Aziraphale. Send him more notes. Visit him once a year. He found the place where Aziraphale treasured his love for the demon. It was a shrine to their love, where the words of love they had exchanged were strung into a song, where images of the demon hanged adored like idols, where winged candles burned. He had to destroy it. He would take the angel to church to witness those services Christian humans loved so much. Yeah, that would do it, he thought, erasing the last breeze of Aziraphale’s memories of love and desire for the demon.

He had tried very hard to keep an eye on Aziraphale, after the first… incident. He sent him notes in which he expressed his satisfaction with his results every other month, and visited once a year, twice the first year after the incident, just to make sure everything was good and correct. It was all going great, actually. Aziraphale’s zeal over his duty led Emperor Constantine to convert to Christianity on his deathbed, considerably altering the future history towards the glorious light of God. Gabriel corporated to award Aziraphale a medal and to tell him how appreciated he was in Heaven. The angel had seemed most embarrassed to receive it, mumbling inaudible words and completely flustered. To lighten the mood, Gabriel had suggested to go for a walk and rejoice in a job well done, but Aziraphale didn’t want to inconvenience the Archangel who surely must have other important heavenly business to attend to and that he, Aziraphale, didn’t want to take up so much of his time, which was so valuable… Gabriel remembered feeling relief. Wasn’t the angel humble! So inspiring. Indeed he dreaded having walks on Earth. It was so dusty and dirty… True, it had got better with the years, cleaner, smoother, more hygienic; but back then it was horribly earthy. Aziraphale was so empathic and understanding.

Sometimes they would go to a church service, sitting on the back benches and admiring humans’ ritualistic methods of worship. Masses changed from place to place and time to time, varied as humans were. Gabriel made Aziraphale show him all of them. His favourite were football games. Thousands of people together watching a ball go round and people running after it, cheering and crying and praying a loud prayer to God for 90 minutes. Delightful.

Gabriel stopped his pacing to look through the window again to Earth. Despite the little demon problem, he had had high expectations for Aziraphale. Once, after the 16th century cleansing, probably the toughest one, he had felt extremely satisfied that the angel had abstained from loving the demon for centuries. He had been terribly thorough that time. Maybe, he thought, he had finally cured him from his love for the demon. He also suspected that a stiffening of human social rules, especially in Britain, where the angel spent most of his time, had something to do with it. It had been the early 19th century, after many outstanding results that spread Her glory across humanity, when Gabriel had taken pity on the angel and managed to get him a promotion offer from the very top. The angel had had enough, he thought, although those thoughts were accompanied by a faint wish of keeping Aziraphale away from demonic influence. The angel seemed as embarrassed and as flustered as usual when offered any award, prize or recognition. Wouldn’t he make some impression on Heaven, used to types as smug as Michael? But Hell didn’t let him forget why he had kept Aziraphale on Earth duty for so long. He was so brave and so strong! Singlehandedly, he destroyed the two demons that lurked around Gabriel and Sandalphon and that had managed to corrupt his skilled tailor and made him cut a ridiculous bright pink dress for him instead of the smooth grey suit he ordered. Gabriel suspected, or maybe hoped, that one the destroyed demons was Crowley.

Crowley had reappeared, though. The world changed at a faster pace than the archangel could follow, but these two were always there. Aziraphale had opened a shop for material objects, a base of operations and a clever form of disguise, and the demon was sauntering around causing havoc and getting humans to use technology. Not that he personally disapproved of technology; it certainly made Earth cleaner, less dusty, more hygienic. But he certainly couldn’t understand it nor why humans were always looking to small square objects in their hands, and why they worshipped a man called Job who wasn’t the one in the Bible.

Four centuries passed since he last had seen Beelzebub when the whole mess of the non-Apocalypse happened. It was the first time they had talked. Beelzebub’s voice was low and slurred in a way Gabriel found profoundly unsettling. So many things about that event had been unsettling. Aziraphale siding with Crowley, who was siding with Aziraphale, abandoning their origins, and both siding with the Antichrist, who was siding with humanity and abandoning his destiny… And then all the confusion about the plans. The Great Plan. The Ineffable Plan. Was there any other plan he was not privy to? His doubtful frown reflected on the window and the sky got another shade darker.

He had approached Beelzebub and whispered in her ear, ‘I am going to need to talk to Head Office. How I am supposed to get 10 million angels to stand down from their war footing. It doesn’t bear thinking...’. Her scent, coal, cinders, burnt mineral oil and a tad of… clove? Filled his nostrils, his lungs. He felt suddenly dizzy. Next thing, he was back on Heaven, looking down at the developments. Beelzebub had told Satan, as promised, but the boy, the boy and those two bastards had spoiled everything. The world didn’t come to an end. The longest week of his life started.

****

Only a few hours, crazy hours, had passed when he received Beelzebub’s call. How had she got his number? Better not to ask.

‘We need holy water.’ Beelzebub said, her voice even deeper and rougher.

‘What for? It’s not like you’ll take baths’, he replied, bitterly.

‘Infernal laws demand that we try the demon Crowley for high treason. In case the capital punishment is decreed, we’ll need holy water to execute it.’, she explained. Gabriel was shocked. A trial? Why not just kill the demon? After all, she _knew._

Surprise transpired in the lack of reply.

‘Well, I thought of asking you first but if you won’t give us holy water, I can ask Michael.’ Michael! That swaggerer.

‘No… er… I was just thinking how much holy water would you need. I guess you’ll need the holiest? I’ll bless it myself.’ Gabriel managed to reply smoothly as if he regularly talked about killing demons with the Prince of Hell. ‘So, you’re going to put him on trial?’, he ventured.

‘Yes. All his record will be put forward in the open. We’ll make an example out of him. Remind every demon that no good deed will go unpunished. Won’t you do the same?’

‘It’s an excellent idea, actually, but we are no so much for trials. After all, only She can judge. I think the less everyone up here knows about what happened, the better. If angels start getting ideas of free will and such...’, Gabriel’s voice quivered. He realized too late how stupid he was.

‘Yeah, don’t. We’re full down here. Already overcrowded. Keep your angels.’ Her voice swelled with sarcasm. Keep the angels. How would they keep Aziraphale? Impossible. They had to get rid of him. Before, he had thought the angel could inspire some humbleness and empathy to other angels. Now, he was afraid of a completely different set of ideas he could inspire.

‘Holy water. When can we get it?’, asked Beelzebub, irritated.

‘Well, what if...’ and then and there the archangel Gabriel laid out his plan to the Prince of Hell.

****

It had been a fiasco. Thank God they never made any publicity about it. Michael had wanted it to be a big deal, with him at the center of course, the Deliverer of Holy Water. He had wanted it to be broadcast on every screen up and down in Heaven and Hell. Gabriel had been against it, and his opinion weighed. Michael couldn’t oppose him. So they sent Aziraphale into the infernal tower of hellish fire all very hush-hush, and when he left unscathed, they hushed it up too. They had been too terrified to prevent him from leaving.

Michael was completely devastated. He had been mocked by the demon Crowley in front of the Royalty of Hell, and of every other demon too. Hell had been publicly open about their trial of the Traitor, as they called him now, damned among the damned. Everyone had seen Michael’s dishonour. Gabriel secretly thanked Michael’s pride: it made him adamant about delivering the holy water to Hell. Otherwise, it would have been him, Gabriel, who would now be the butt of everyone’s jokes.

Beelzebub had also been insulted by the demon’s shamelessness. Gabriel disapproved of anything and anyone who would make fun of a figure of authority. He would like to punish the pair again, but, how? They were immortals and immune to the only thing that could have completely destroy them. Instead, they were safe, happy and together on Earth. Dining at the Ritz. Laughing. Loving.

Gabriel clenched his fists against the window. Any other time, this would have been one of such non-meetings with Beelzebub, materializing on Earth at the same spot to take their agents back and erase their memories of love. However, now that they had abandoned Heaven and Hell, what was the point of going after them? The angel and the demon were not working for them anymore. They were on their own now, and he was never going to see Beelzebub again.

The flicker of pain he felt caught him by surprise. Absolute surprise. Shocked, hands on his head, he stumbled until he sat on his cushiony and elegant office chair. Had he been human, he would have had a heart attack, Gabriel thought. He thanked God’s mercy for making him heartless and immortal, and then he felt it again. A twitch of pain, and of sadness.

What could it possibly be?

The phone rang. It was her.

‘So. What are you going to do? What does your boss say?’, Beelzebub’s voice came through the line.

‘Oh, er… Hello, yes.. Well, I don’t think She would share her plans with you’, Gabriel found himself saying. The pain was suddenly gone and he felt better, and stronger.

‘Nor with anyone, it seems.’

‘What about… your boss?’

‘The Light-Bringer keeps silence too’.

The conversation died for a while. The silence made Gabriel uncomfortable – he had had enough of silence for a century.

‘Beelzebub, I've been thinking and… well, all these years the situation was quite good for both sides, don’t you agree?’ Gabriel said, tentatively. ‘I mean, we were getting a lot worship, more every year with demographics and monotheism and such, while your agent, the demon Crowley, managed very well large-scale evil doing. It’s not like I approve or anything, but merely express admiration of a job well done, even if I essentially disagree with it.’

‘Yeah. He was our best agent.’

Silence again. Then Beelzebub spoke.

‘Your angel wasn’t too good either. Glutton and lustful. Not a saint.’

‘Definitely not a saint.’ Gabriel nodded on the phone. ‘Perfect for Earth duty, though. Our best agent.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I mean, since time hasn’t stopped and Creation hasn’t come to an end and we must keep doing our jobs because, what else are we going to do, right?’ Gabriel said, a tad more nervous than usual. ‘I was thinking that it would be difficult to find some new agents who knew the ins and outs of working with humans, don’t you think? It would take time and training and we would in the meanwhile miss a lot of goodness and evilness...’  
‘I see where you’re going. You want to keep them’, Beelzebub said slowly, putting thought in the idea as she expressed it in words.

‘Yes. I think we should get them back on our respective sides. We may have to rewrite the contract but we would negotiate. I am sure we can reason with them and come to a satisfactory agreement.’ Gabriel sounded more confident than he really was, but it was worth a try.

After a pause, Beelzebub said, ‘How are we going to convince them?’

She was in. Gabriel’s confidence sky-rocketed.

‘Why don’t we meet on Earth and discuss it face to face?’ Wow, wasn’t he bold! His smile was genuine now, he could see it mirrored on the window.

‘They’re at the bookshop. See you there’, said Beelzebub before hanging up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel gets ready for the most important meeting of the post-non-Apocalypse era. In Aziraphale's bookshop, he was to entertain himself while he waits for Beelzebub, who is late. When she arrives, Gabriel has already sullied his ethereal soul with human literature, so he feels that a little wine won't hurt.

Gabriel wasn’t fond of Earth nor human culture, except for the clothes, sports and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Clothes were a wonderful invention. They made one look suave, elegant and, if one knew how to combine colors and patterns, it enhanced one’s authority. He had a walk-in-closet full of the best suits of every human era, should they get back into fashion. His first piece was a silk tunic, back in the very old days, and his wardrobe kept growing with Ermenegildo Zegna and Saint Laurent. He summoned his best suit for the occasion. After all, he had an impression to make. This would be the most important meeting of the post-non-Apocalypse era.

Dressed impeccably, Gabriel corporated in his favorite barber shop. He could use a trim. The barber didn’t understand why he was still working way after his closing hours, trimming this American guy who seemed so familiar – he couldn’t pinpoint where he had seen him, maybe on the telly? Yeah, that was it, he was some kind of celebrity who ought to get his hair done after regular hours because of, you know, fans and all that. What was he famous for? He couldn’t say, but he wasn’t going to admit his ignorance. Wasn’t the man nice and elegant!

Gabriel left the barber a generous tip and miracled himself in front of Aziraphale’s bookshop. He didn’t want to be late.

The bookshop hadn’t changed much since Aziraphale first opened it. The area around it had, though. Gabriel visited Earth only occasionally, but he had noticed how humans preferred to gather around each other as close as possible. Buildings had come up, sharing their walls, pressed against each other. Even in the dead of the night, as it was now in London, people on the street walked side by side, if not arm in arm. He pondered what type of joy did humans derived from proximity and physical contact. It must had been ingrained in their nature by Almighty.

Beelzebub hadn’t arrived yet. One could hardly expect a demon to be punctual. Well, he would wait. Their plan would only succeed as a joint venture. The bookshop was closed, which was not unusual, the lights off. Gabriel miracled the door open – if he had to wait, better to do so inside.

The bookshop seemed positively empty. The streetlamps’ light flowed dimly in, lighting up the particles of dust in the air and the material objects Aziraphale sold. How had Sandalphon called them? Ah, books, that was it. Books on shelves, books on tables, even lying on the floor, books all around. Did Aziraphale really sell any of them? He seemed to have more every time he visited.

There was a couch near the back of the shop. On the little sidetable, there was a heap of wooden flat objects strung together, almost like a fan, flanked by two glasses that still contained some red liquid. Gabriel had seen it before. It was a drink highly favoured by humans since they left Eden. They even used it at some of their religious services, the church ones. They called it something like… the blood of Christ. Would the demon drink the blood of Christ? That seemed… blasphemous. Maybe... that was why he was immune to holy water? Good Heavens! Demons could never know about this. What if they all became immune? That would be the end of Heaven, with or without Armageddon.

Worried about his discovery, Gabriel took the wooden object that lied on the table to distract himself. It had engraved a text in a script he hadn’t seen for a very long time. Almost since the 4th C CE. Nowadays it look very different, but he could still understand it. This thing was ancient, he thought. Aziraphale must have done a miracle to preserve it.

He sat down on the couch to read the text.

****

Until he finished reading the palm-leaf manuscript, because that was what it was, he didn’t notice that Beelzebub had already arrived. She was standing by the couch in which he was now lying down, staring at him. She seemed blurry. Gabriel rubbed his eyes and she came into focus.

‘You seemed entranced. Was it good?’, she asked.

Gabriel was shocked to find he couldn’t reply right away. There was some kind of knot in his throat. He had to swallow before being able to speak, and his voice came out coarse. He said simply ‘Yes’.

Beelzebub looked around. She glanced at the glasses on the table.

‘Have you been drinking wine too?’

Ah, wine. Yes. That was the other name of the liquid. No, he hadn’t, but he may give it a try. Somehow it now seemed like the thing to do.

‘Would you like some?’, he asked.

Beelzebub reached the wine bottle tucked between the table and the couch, and poured a generous amount of wine in both glasses. Then she offered one to Gabriel.

‘To tonight’s success’, she toasted.

‘Cheers’, he said, raising the glass as he had seen humans do.

Gabriel had never sullied his body with gross matter before. However, neither had he sullied his soul with any human literature before, nothing beyond the occasional quote Aziraphale used in his reports to Head Office, or the songs of The Sound of Music that She liked so much. He felt in a way that he had never felt before. Was this the reason why Aziraphale surrounded himself with books? To feel... like this? But, why would anyone like to feel like this? If he could stop it immediately, he would. He knew he couldn’t miracle feelings away. Aziraphale had read this same manuscript and drank the blood of Christ. Maybe it would heal him somehow.

He gulped the whole glass. He felt warmth spreading along his body, seeping into his ethereal form. His throat burnt and he started coughing.

‘You’ve never drunk anything before, have you?’, asked Beelzebub, who had just sipped her glass.

Along with the warmth from the wine, Gabriel felt a sudden heat on his face. He was blushing.

‘Move’, Beelzebub said, pointing to his feet. ‘Let me sit down.’ He obeyed, and sat upright, keeping the manuscript on his lap.

‘This stuff is good,’ she said, looking at the wine in the dim light. ‘The bastards know a good wine. If your plan works, I’ll have them send me a box of this every month’.

Gabriel started feeling dizzy. He was being overpowered by more sensations than he was accustomed to deal with. Too many stimuli. The impact of the text stanzas in his mind, the wine warming his body and soul, Beelzebub’s alluring scent beside him, the bookshop’s old and moldy smell, the dim light of the streetlamps accentuating the shadows, the sensation of being on Earth, inside a body, and the strange noises coming from upstairs that he hadn’t heard before, he had been so enthralled with the text!

Gabriel looked Beelzebub in the eye, then up to the ceiling and back to the Prince of Hell.

‘Is that…’

‘...Exactly what you think it is’, she finished the sentence for him. She sipped from her glass again. ‘It's not like this is the first time we hear them’.

She was right, but Gabriel had always preferred to ignore that information. Maybe he had miraculously deafened the noises before, rather unconsciously, almost like a reflex. But now he had been caught off guard. Beelzebub looked amused and poured more wine in his glass.

‘I think you could use some more wine’, she said. ‘Drink slowly. Just do as I do – sip.’

Gabriel followed her movements and sipped the wine. It was much better than gulping it down. His throat didn’t burn and he still felt the warmth, but it didn’t overpower him like the previous time. In fact, it seemed to give him some of the strength he had lost. He decided to stand up.

‘So here we are. And there they are,’ he said, pointing to the ceiling. ‘Let us discuss how to lead this negotiation before actually speaking to them. We must be more persuasive than we were with the Antichrist.’

‘I’m listening’, Beelzebub said.

‘Yeah, good. So,’ Gabriel started pacing up and down a little, ‘they prevented Armageddon, or rather tried to, so they betrayed us both, and we tried killing them, and it didn’t work, and...’ Suddenly, he remembered the wine and felt really nervous. ‘Hey, Bee, sorry but, may I call you Bee? It looks like you know about this wine stuff… Ah, have you been drinking it for long?’

‘You may not call me Bee. You can try Royal Highness,’ she said surly. ‘And about wine, yes, since Crowley invented it.’

‘Crowley invented it?’ Gabriel said in disbelief. How would something invented by a demon be used to worship God Herself! That was the hell of a joke.

‘We gave him a commendation for it. Delicious stuff, intoxicates humans and makes them even more prone to sin. And they love it! Some even kill themselves drinking it.’ Beelzebub’s face exuded triumph.

‘Ok, but… Do demons usually drink it too?’

‘Well, not usually. But some may, if they come to Earth and have a chance,’ she said, taking another sip. ‘It’s tasty.’

Right, Gabriel thought, demons drink it and they are scared of holy water. Demons still die by holy water. Therefore, he had to conclude that wine had nothing to do with Crowley’s immunity, and that there must be some other reason for it. If only they knew why!

‘Yeah, why not? Sorry for the detour. So, Bee...lzebub,’ Gabriel resumed his pacing. ‘Won’t you have any idea why we couldn’t kill them, would you?’

He kept pacing waiting for a reply. When it didn’t come, he looked at the Prince of Hell, who was busy with the palm-leaf manuscript he had left on the couch.

‘Yes, actually, I do,’ she said, without looking up from the words she was reading. She was familiar with the script too, she remembered the blood-thirsty king Ashoka that Hell lost back in the day, 3rd century BCE, in India. This wasn’t as old, but almost. She passed her fingers over the title.  
‘Abhijnanasakuntalam,’ she whispered to herself. ‘The Recognition of Sakuntala. A play in seven acts. To my dear friend and model spectator, Asiraphala, hoping you relish the taste of this drama.’

‘And that is…?’

Beelzebub raised her eyes and said. ‘Love.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abhijnanasakuntalam (The recognition of Shakuntala) is a play written by the Indian playwright and poet Kalidasa in, probably the 1st century BC (though dates are highly disputed). It tells the story of Shakuntala, daughter of an apsara (female demigod) and a mortal man who lives as a simple hermit girl living in a forest where ascetic men and women perform austerities to attain higher knowledge. The king Dushanta arrives for sport and hunting, but on seeing each other in the blooming forest, they fall in love. They are completely enraptured with each other: Dushanta disregards his royal duties and his family duties and decides to remain in the forest despite being recalled to the capital. They get married in a mutually consensual ceremony (Gandharva rite), gives her a ring with his royal emblem, and finally leaves to the capital. Shakuntala is so obsessed with her love for the king that she can't possibly think of anything else and fails to receive a guest. This guest is the enlightened sage Durvasa, known for his short temper. Feeling insulted, he curses Shakuntala: the one she can't stop thinking about won't recognise her upon meeting her next time. Only if that person sees a token of recognition he had given to her before he will remember her. (spoilers ahead)
> 
> Shakuntala then tells her family about her marriage to the King (and her pregnancy). They are very happy for her and send her to the capital accompanied by some hermits and her adoptive mother. On the way, while bathing in a river, she loses the ring. When they arrive to the royal palace, the King fails to recognise her. He insults her as a gold-digger, since she is pregnant. Her entourage abandons her, since, if she really married the King, is better for her to serve at the house of her husband than to return to her parents' house. Shakuntala cries in pain for her misfortune, and her mother the demigod comes down and fetches her up to her celestial abode. There, she lives in another hermitage, and a son is born to her.
> 
> Years later, a fisherman catches a fish and finds a ring with the royal emblem inside its entrails. It is taken to the court - when the king Dushanta sees it, he suddenly remembers Shakuntala. Ashamed, he goes to the heavens to ask for her forgiveness and take her back to his kingdom. Although Shakuntala is still hurt and at first pretends not to recognise him, upon seeing how much her son seems to love the King already, forgives him and they three go back to Earth and live happily ever after.
> 
> It is a classic Sankrit play, if not the Classic Sanskrit play par excellence. It also has a plot device (loss of memories, token of recognition) that I have seen in some GO fanfics. I'm not sure if the writers were aware of this play, but I thought it was an interesting parallel. Also, I just love the play. I'm sure Aziraphale has manuscripts of literature from all around the world, not just the western world. And we know he loves plays!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sitting at the back of Aziraphale's bookshop, Beelzebub recalls the first time she met the Archangel Gabriel.

‘Won’t you have any idea why we couldn’t kill them, would you?’, Gabriel had asked her, in the back of the angel’s bookshop.

Beelzebub raised her eyes to meet his and said. ‘Love.’

Gabriel seemed to be taken aback. She wondered how long she would have to stare until he started showing signs of feeling uncomfortable.

Beelzebub wasn’t fond of Earth nor human culture, except for clothes, perfume, and Sun Tzu’s Art of War. She thought that clothes allowed those who wore them a way to express their individuality that had been unthinkable before humans invented them. Moreover, if one knew how to combine colours and patterns, clothes enhanced one’s authority. That was of supreme importance in Hell, where she had to control millions of demons. She couldn’t let them question her.

War was, well, her and her fellow demons’ bread and butter. Wars caused suffering, made people do horrible things they wouldn’t do otherwise, killed them, and just made Hell an unhappier place. Also, it was their objective to win one, Armageddon. Since humans had had so much more experience at war than they had – they had only fought once, while humans had been fighting since they left Eden – Beelzebub thought it wise to learn from the best. In her quarters, she had a succinct private collection of war treatises, the Art of War being her favourite.

Love, on the other hand, wasn’t something she had experienced first-hand. She had experienced it second-hand, though. Beelzebub had ventured into Crowley’s soul and studied his memories of love with a wicked fascination over the fact that a demon could feel it. It didn’t seem so far-fetched to her now as it did at first.

Beelzebub kept staring at the archangel. He was starting to fret. When had she seen Gabriel for the first time? Ah, Constantinople, the great city of sin. Humans tended to crowd pieces of land, preferably near water, gathering into huge masses of people and bricks. Big cities boiled with sin. Crowley had been dispatched there with instructions to prevent any heavenly intervention that would significantly change the city. The emperor’s paganism and bloodiness was of utter importance. Crowley had seemed to do his job as usual, even better when he sent a note on the new monetary policies that notably diminished the poor masses’ purchasing power. The city seethed with hatred. She had been about to sent Crowley a commendation when Emperor Constantine stopped opposing Christianity. That’s how she noticed.

She had been surprised to see Gabriel entering the tiny house where the angel and Crowley stayed in Constantinople. She had thought that it all was a ploy from Heaven to distract and thwart their most efficient agent. How intelligent, having an angel seduce a demon! Of course Crowley wouldn’t have resisted – after all, lust was a sin! However, as soon as she saw Gabriel in that house, she realised that wasn’t what had actually happened. 

She knew because Gabriel had looked startled when he saw her. He wasn’t expecting her to be there, that much was clear. He had no idea of what was going on. Clueless archangel! He was just probably paying a scheduled visit to their glutton and lustful agent. She was going to really shake the guy with the revelation. Beelzebub savoured the moment – what look would come to the archangel’s handsome face? Slowly, she pulled the curtain that hid the lovers.

Gabriel’s face flushed – then, he turned pale. He stood there like a statue, transfixed and gaping. She sent one of her flies towards his mouth playfully, but he closed it before it had the chance to go inside. 

She had to admit it was a disgusting… display to look at. The two were sleeping peacefully in a close embrace, the angel’s plump arm wrapped around Crowley’s body, Crowley’s leg between the angel’s legs, his head softly leaning on Aziraphale’s neck. Their faces were dreadfully happy and relaxed, their hair was soaked in sweat. They looked youthful, as if they weren’t thousands of years old. White cotton linens wrinkled around their waists. The room smelled of sex. But that wasn’t the worst – the worst was the loving feeling they emanated. The more she looked at them, the sicker she felt. She was about to vomit, but she didn’t want to look weak in front of the archangel. Beelzebub snapped her fingers and left with the demon, back to Hell, leaving the angel for Gabriel to deal with.

As soon as they reached Hell, Crowley woke up very alarmed. She had materialised them in her quarters. This was serious and it had to be managed with her most powerful weapon: mystery.

Crowley was lying naked at the center of Beelzebub’s quarters, the faint light focused on him. She walked around him, between the light and the shadows, in measured steps, and summoned more flies. For some minutes, or maybe hours, the only thing one could hear in the room were the flies and Beelzebub’s steps circling the helpless demon. He was clever enough not to say anything. He was waiting for her to speak first.

Biding her time, she tried to exhaust the demon with uncertainty, desperation and anguish. But he didn’t budge. He looked at her with wide golden eyes, curious, patient. In the end, it was her who grew tired first. Without saying a word – she wasn’t going to give in – she launched her mind into his soul, and took over it.

For some hours, Beelzebub had entertained the idea that the angel had somehow possessed the demon – she hadn’t seen it before, but no one had said it was impossible. Demons could certainly possess humans. Would demons or angels be unpossessable? Maybe she would try one day. But this fascinating idea was soon thrown away as the cause of Crowley’s behaviour. Once she took over his soul, she felt it, in every occult fiber of her being – the echo of love.

How had she known it was love? That was quite a question. One thing was sure: Crowley experienced it as love. It was like a shadow of the Grace of God she faintly remembered from those long gone days before the Fall. Beelzebub hardly remembered how things were back then. It had been so awfully long ago – many other things had occupied her mind since. There was no use in keeping those memories alive. She only recalled faded feelings: how oppressed she had felt, the admiration she felt for Lucifer and, vaguely, the Grace of God. Still, she could tell the difference. Her Grace had been like a warm light enveloping her entire self, making her feel safe, contented, certain, blissful. Love was different. She could feel Crowley’s pain even in the love he felt. There was pain and there was sorrow and there was wrath and there was desire, and there were a thousand other little feelings. It was complex, a puzzle of emotions that if joined in one way made the picture of Love, but if joined in another way made the picture of Hatred.

That was interesting. She stepped aside, taking a little break to be able to cope with all the information. Crowley stirred – he was trying to get free. She couldn’t possibly allow that. She went back in, ready to get her hand on every feeling of love and twist it into hate or destroy it.

Several hours, or maybe days, passed before she considered her task finished. The number of memories of love had been immense. She re-lived every one of them, from their very first meeting in the wall of the Garden of Eden, to their last night in Constantinople. The idiot! He had been in love for so long it didn’t bear thinking. In one thing she had been right, it had been the angel who had finally seduced him. If Crowley hadn’t had his brilliantly dark record of successes on Earth, Beelzebub would have considered destroying him and tempting the angel to join their ranks instead. He would have made a fine demon indeed!

After each memory she experienced, Beelzebub tried to change it, twist it, turn it into hate and enmity, or simply destroy it when there was no other way. She was especially careful with the very last memories of Constantinople, which she tried to simply erase. She also tried to infuse in Crowley a sense of distrust towards the angel, something he just lacked. She didn’t touch anything else, fearing any important loss of knowledge about Earth ways would affect the demon’s dark performance.

She sent Crowley back to Earth just as she had brought him to Hell, with a snap of her fingers. She left him at the grounds just outside the city, where he lied as a trampled flower overwhelmed by a demonic slumber.

That had been the first time she had known love, and it wouldn’t be the last one. As much as she tried, somehow the angel always found his way into Crowley’s heart again and again – she could erase Crowley’s memories, but she couldn’t twist his feelings enough as to make him hate the angel, at least not for long. Great as her demonic power was, it proved insufficient in this context.

She wasn’t sure about how Gabriel managed his angel, but she guessed that he was approaching the case in a similar way. Aziraphale wasn’t recalled like the other angels had been at the beginning – he was still assigned to Earth. The archangel’s power seemed insufficient too, as the angel kept falling in love with the demon. No one else but Gabriel ever came to pick him up. It was always the two of them, usually at night, creeping into a bedroom and making the angel and the demon disappear. 

Until the 16th century. 

After that, things calmed a little. Maybe it was the experience she had gathered throughout all those centuries erasing Crowley’s memories – she must have got really good at it –, because that time, it seemed to actually work. Probably Gabriel had improved his technique too, because Aziraphale turned fussier, more distrustful and generally gave Crowley a harder time. He also started living mostly in England, which might have helped his sudden renunciation of emotion. Four centuries passed before Beelzebub had the chance to meet Gabriel again, and though the angel and the demon were as guilty as usual, this last time they hadn’t met in any bedroom.

And they had met one more time. Gabriel was very much in front of her, his face flushed with wine and gaping, very much like in their very first meeting, upon her mention of the word “love”.

‘Are you serious?’, he asked in a shrill manner.

‘I am always serious’, she replied.

She didn’t put it past beyond Her to allow love between an angel and a demon become something sacred. After all, even if She couldn’t influence the demon, holy water was Her stuff, and She could do with it whatever She damned wanted.

‘Do you have any other idea?’, she asked, staring.

‘Actually… No’, he said. His head tilted, and he sat down again on the couch, defeated.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel and Beelzebub discuss their options. How can they convince the angel and the demon to keep working for them? What do they have to offer? Should they just get up to their bedroom, kidnap them and erase their memories, again? Beelzebub thinks a different approach is needed. Gabriel takes inspiration from a human play.

Beelzebub was looking at the wall clock, counting the passing minutes. Gabriel had been sulking for the past 27 of them. Upstairs, the angel and the demon had been noisy for about the same amount of time. Sipping her wine, she wondered who would lose – would Gabriel break his silence first, or would the couple break their noise? Most likely, she would finish the entire wine bottle first, Beelzebub thought. Just in case, she poured more wine on Gabriel’s empty glass. Drinking alone wasn’t as fun.

‘Won’t they ever stop?’ asked Gabriel, stirred by Beelzebub’s movement.

28\. They had won.

‘What’s wrong with you? You’re acting as if they were news. Haven’t we known for like two millenia? I don’t see why you’re making such a fuss,’ she said, glaring at him. She had had enough of his nonsense. ‘I came here because you said you had a plan. However, the only thing you seem to have is prudishness. I’m out of here.’

Beelzebub, gulping the rest of her wine at once, got up. With his left hand, Gabriel pulled the collar of his expensive shirt open, to ease his breathing, while with his right hand he grabbed Beelzebub’s.

‘No! Please, sorry, stay…You’re right. I’m fine now. Let’s talk.’

She turned around to face him, and said icily, ‘Ok. But let go of my hand.’

‘Oh, sure, sorry.’ Gabriel blushed, the third time in an hour.

‘Hm.’

Beelzebub didn’t sit down again. She stood up, making it clear that she was ready to leave if the archangel started sulking again.

‘I agreed with you that keeping them as agents was the most sensible thing to do. That’s why I came to meet you. Tell me how do you plan to convince them to keep working for us, or I’ll leave. They have no reason whatsoever. Indeed I reckon they have a lot more reasons not to work for us. Especially, if you behave like that,’ she said accusingly.

‘We’ll have to give them a reason to want to work for us. There must be something we can offer them,’ he said.

‘I’m all ears.’

Gabriel sprang up and resumed his pacing.

‘Well, so for instance we’ll allow them to keep their little romance going. Only if they don’t make a big deal of it. Any attention drawn to it would be… inconvenient for us.’

‘If you want them back, that’s a given. They’ve already got their not-so-little romance on and going. I don’t think that’s enough to make them work for us again.’

‘Or we could go up and drag them back to Heaven and Hell, and erase their memories, like in the old times,’ Gabriel said.

‘That’s a plan,’ Beelzebub said. ‘But what if they resist? We aren’t a menace to them any longer. Quite the contrary, what if they attack us here? They’ll have holy water and hellfire to throw at us. We would be destroyed.’

‘Oh, I hadn’t considered that...’

‘We need a different approach this time, I’m afraid. We need to remind them of their duties, regain their trust, give them a purpose, and make them an offer they can’t refuse. Something they wouldn’t be able to get in any other way.’

‘The demon will never trust me,’ Gabriel said.

‘Crowley’d better not. He won’t trust me either. He’s a demon, demons don’t trust. Except, he trusts Aziraphale. If you can win the angel’s trust, Crowley’ll play along.’

Beelzebub was right, Gabriel thought. Heaven and Hell had to accept that Aziraphale and the demon loved each other and they had to stop interfering. Erasing memories wouldn’t do this time.

‘I think that their love is the most important thing for them,’ he said. ‘Nothing else can compare.’

‘But we can’t offer them their own love,’ Beelzebub was perplexed.

‘Except, we can. It’s all in that play,’ Gabriel said with a triumphant smile, pointing at the palm-leaf manuscript on the table.

Beelzebub sat down on the couch. ‘In this?’ she asked, taking it in her hands.

‘Yes! The play tells the story about two humans who fall in love in a garden. They are enraptured, obsessed with each other, and disregard anything but their love. They disregard their family, their duties, … all they can think about is each other,’ Gabriel explained, gesturing excitedly. He knew his idea was brilliant! ‘Then the human male is recalled to his head office and the female stays behind in the garden, pining about him. Because she forgets her responsibilities at work in the garden, another human feels offended and gets really angry. This is a powerful human who, well, sounds more like a demon. Durvasa is his name, rings any bell?’

‘Nope?’ Beelzebub said.

‘Fine, just asking. So this Durvasa curses the female: the male won’t recognize her next time they meet. She doesn’t believe it, but her friends, who are much more clever than her, I must say, they do, so they plead with Durvasa and he agrees that the male human will remember her only if he sees a token that he has given to her, a ring. The female leaves to the head office of the male because they are supposed to live together, since they love each other, and well enough, the male doesn’t remember her when he sees her.’

‘And the ring?’ Beelzebub asked, suddenly interested.

‘Oh, the female had lost it along the way or something. So the male’s memories have been erased, the female is really upset about it and leaves to another garden, where she waits. Years later the ring is found and the male human recovers his memories about her. He is elated and also sad for having forgotten her, so he runs up to meet her again and asks for forgiveness.’

‘Wait a second, do you mean that he forgot all about her and she waited? For what? Why didn’t she look for another human male?’

‘Well…,’ Gabriel’s voice lost some of its enthusiasm. ‘I’m not sure, but I think it’s, ah, like the angel and the demon, who fall in love with one another again and again. Like there is no one else the female could love. Just this one male.’

‘But that makes no sense. There are plenty of humans! Millions! Crowley and Aziraphale were the only ones of their kind on Earth, there was no one else to love,’ Beelzebub protested.

‘That’s not entirely true,’ the archangel said. ‘There were others, on Earth, and of course on Heaven and Hell...’

‘But they were on Earth most of the time, alone, and the others that were sent here were temporary, sporadic assignments. Nothing close to even a century!’

‘Wait, what? What are you implying here? That because they were the only ethereal beings on Earth they… Because we didn’t replace them… Because we kept sending them back...’ Gabriel was feeling suffocated. The room started to dance around in circles.

‘Maybe. Not like they had to, you know, but… Maybe a little rotation might had, er... prevented it.’

Gabriel’s entire material body shivered. Stumbling, he sat down on the couch. ‘How the Hell am I going to explain this to Head Office?’, he said in a strangled voice.

Beelzebub miracled the empty wine bottle full and poured him some more. ‘Here, drink,’ she said, offering it to the archangel, who took it and drank it thoughtlessly. She poured herself some too. The wine tasted better with every sip.

Gabriel stiffened his back straight and staring at Beelzebub with a severe look, said: ‘This cannot get out of this room. You hear? This entire… conversation, nothing should get out of here. No one, no one...’

‘… will know about it. Do you think it will be easy for me to explain this to Lucifer?’ Beelzebub said. ‘If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.’

‘If I tell anyone, they’ll kill me,’ Gabriel sighed. ‘I know I would, if were in the position.’

‘You could ask for forgiveness,’ she suggested.

‘Forgiveness?’

‘Yeah. Isn’t it what She does? Anyway, you were telling me the story of this play, how does it end? How does it affect our plans?’

Gabriel tried to regain his composure. ‘Yes. So the male human asks for forgiveness and she forgives him and they live happily ever after. The end.’

‘That’s it? He forgets about her and she forgives him the minute he comes back?’

‘Well, he was forced to forget. No like he actually forgot. His memories were temporarily erased… Just like we did to them.’ Gabriel said pointing upstairs. ‘The humans in the story got their love back when he recovered his memories. He was happy to remember everything. She was even happier to be able to love and be loved by him. I think the connection is clear. We offer them back their memories, in exchange they keep working for us.’

It was perfect, Gabriel thought. Humans were so inventive. They would write books, and people would find answers in them.

On the other hand, Beelezebub wasn’t entirely persuaded.

‘Ok, those humans in the story were happy but… has it really been proven? What happened after the story ended? It’s just a bunch of words in some old palm-leaves. How can we be sure that they won’t get upset with us? I definitely would. I would attack you if I was them, actually. I would be so mad if I discovered you had stolen my memories and erased them. My rage would know no limits.’

‘That is a possible outcome we need to consider, definitely,’ Gabriel said. It could happen, there was no denying it.

The two sunk into a thoughtful silence. Drinking the wine away, they debated with themselves the idea. Was it safe for them to admit they had erased Crowley’s and Aziraphale’s memories? Would they be happy to recover them? Would they even want the memories? After all, they had lived so long without them.

Beelzebub looked into her glass of wine. She had an idea. It was scary, something she would rather not do, but given the critical situation they were in, it seemed to her the only way to know. She gulped the wine left before putting forward her proposal.

‘Gabriel, I think the only way to know how they will react is… reliving one of the erased memories we will give them back. If, after we experience it, we think that losing it is devastating, that in the case we lost such a memory we would kill to get it back, then I think your plan could work. Now, if after the experience we think it wouldn’t make a difference in our lives, then, we need a Plan B.’

Gabriel looked at her shocked. What an idea! Reliving their memories? The idea that going through exactly what they had gone through would help them understand them was… Well, it was brilliant. He would have to note it down.

‘Sounds good. Which one?’ he asked.

‘Which one what?’

‘Memory. We’ll have to choose the same one.’

‘I think it would be appropriate to start from the beginning.’

‘Constantinople, then?’

‘Constantinople.’


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chapter you have been waiting for! Aziraphale and Crowley bump into each other in Constantinople, and love happens.

Days had been sunny, hot and humid for months. It was summer in Constantinople, or Byzantium, the name most citizens still used. The name change was fairly recent. One of those eccentricities of imperious rulers. Crowley was sauntering along the market, watching trinkets and clothes and other silly human things. Passing the time. He walked by a cart full of delicious-looking red apples, and was immediately drawn to it. He took one in his hand and scrutinised it as if his eyes were microscopes.

Then, something bumped his back, making him trip and fall all over the apple cart, which crumbled into pieces to the horror of the shopkeeper. Surrounded by apples strewn on the ground, he turned around to see what had hit him.

To his left, among the red apples, lay Aziraphale. Crowley would recognise him on the spot anywhere. The angel was moaning and writhing in pain. In front of them was a bunch of men and women with angry faces. By their looks, Crowley realised they were a family: a furious family who were lashing out at Aziraphale. What could he have done? Anyway, It didn’t matter now - they were too many, too incensed with rage, and the angel was obviously knocked out and unable to take care of himself. Miracling the angel invisible to their eyes, Crowley stood up. Stepping forward, he asked who seemed to be the _pater familias:_

‘What the Heavens is going on?’

‘That bloody pimp! Have you seen him? Where did he go? He was just here a minute ago!’ the man yelled in a hoarse voice.

‘Who?’

‘The blond faggot! He’s no man!’, a woman beside the man burst out.

‘Faustina! We are in public. There is no need to bring more infamy to our family,’ the man said, reproaching who must have been his wife.

‘Our son! He’s ruining him!’ she cried.

Crowley didn’t like dealing with emotional humans. They were too messy, too irrational, and appeasing them was often futile. He thought it better to put out a bait and get rid of them.

‘Oh, yes! The bastard!’ he said with scorn. ‘He went that way!’

The family stared intently as he raised his hand and pointed to the right. At once, they started running in that direction, without even saying thank you. Crowley looked at them with disdain as they left.

Behind him, sitting on the ground, Aziraphale was looking at him. He had been stunned by the fall, but as soon as he heard Crowley’s voice, he came round. He would recognise his voice anywhere.

The demon turned around and faced the angel.

‘Crowley! Thank you!’ said Aziraphale, his eyes gleaming with gratefulness, his voice full of feeling.

‘WHAT? What did you just say?’

‘You helped me! No, you _saved_ me! The least I can do is...’

‘I didn’t save _you_! They ruined my afternoon walk and the apple I was about to eat. I merely took revenge misleading them,’ Crowley said.

‘Oh, so it was just that they… disturbed you,’ the angel said, incapable of hiding his disappointment.

‘Exactly so.’

‘Oh, well, then,’ Aziraphale got up, dusting off his clothes and rearranging his curls. ‘I should get going then, I guess. I, uh, I wouldn’t want to spoil the rest of your afternoon.’

Crowley grabbed his arm before the angel could as much as take a step.

‘Where do you think you’re going, angel? I deserve an explanation. I’ve just heard that you have been ruining someone. How interesting! I want to know all about it,’ the demon said with a grin.

‘It’s not what you think, Crowley,’ he sighed. ‘But if you really want to hear about it, I’ll tell you. Just not here. Let’s go somewhere else. Those people will return as soon as they realise you have lead them on the wrong track.’

‘Ok. I know a place where we can lie low. Come on.’

Among the crowd that was flooding in the market, Crowley led Aziraphale through narrower and narrower streets, until they arrived at the sea. They climbed up the recently inaugurated Constantinian Wall and sat on it, watching the soothing waves and the little boats coming and going to and fro the strait.

‘Is this your idea of lying low, Crowley? On top of a wall?’ Aziraphale couldn’t help laughing. Crowley smiled.

‘I think you had something to tell me,’ he said.

‘Ah, yes. By the way, I’m really sorry about what happened before, in the market. What a stroke of luck, bumping into you at that precise moment!’

Crowley smirked, then narrowed his eyes:

‘What a stroke of luck indeed. Some would even say it was a miracle,’ he said. There was no way the angel had miracled for help so randomly as to call him in, a demon. He wouldn’t have done anything of the sort. This was a stupid idea. It must have been something else, like a simple coincidence. ‘That mob would have beaten you badly.’

‘Yes. Probably.’ Aziraphale looked morose again.

‘So, what happened, angel?’

‘Oh, it’s this boy, this young thing I’ve met. He was crying, oh dear, how he was crying! I thought, what unimaginable pain he must be going through. I had to help!’ Aziraphale started. ‘His family thinks I’ve ruined him, but I just tried to help, I swear. They don’t understand him. He has a loving, beautiful relationship with this other man. But his family says he’s too old to play such games – that’s what they call it – that he brings infamy to their family, that he must put an end to it. I tried to talk to them, to reason with them, but it’s impossible! They don’t care about love at all!’

‘I see. What do they want him to do?’

‘To be a _man_.’

‘So, because you defended him, now his family blames you, right? Ah, that’s so human,’ Crowley said.

‘But they really love each other dearly! How can his family be against it? I don’t get it,’ the angel shook his head and stared at his toes.

‘You know what? I don’t get it either. It seems to me that humans live by sets of rules that change all the time. It’s hard to keep track of them. Like names. This wall used to be called just “the wall”, but they added some inches to it and now it’s “the Wall of Constantine”. In the future it will change its name again, I’m sure.’

‘Sorry, what’s your point?’ Aziraphale asked, turning his face to Crowley.

‘My point is, human rules are like walls. They change size, some disappear completely, while others appear out of nowhere, and change names constantly.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t worry, angel. Rules will change again.’ Crowley stood up on the wall as he spoke. ‘Those people will keep looking for you. I think you’d better go into hiding for a while.’

‘Hiding? Where?’

‘I think it’ll be enough if you stop visiting your regular places. They’ll ask around to find you, and, angel, you’re easy to spot.’

‘But, I don’t know where else to go!’ Aziraphale wailed. He paused for a moment, thinking. Then he stood up and said: ‘I think… I think I’ll be safer if I stick with you.’

‘With me? Oh no, no, no way. You’ll be thwarting all my wiles! I have a job to do.’ Crowley was astonished at the angel’s suggestion.

‘Of course I’ll be thwarting whatever wiles I see you do,’ said the angel, his voice exuding righteousness. Realising that he was shooting himself in the foot, Aziraphale changed his tone. ‘Listen, just-just don’t do anything too bad for a few days. Sloth is a sin too, isn’t it? You can pick up your evil work after a few days.’

‘Sloth, uh?’ Crowley seemed to give it a thought for a second. ‘Only if you stop doing your work too.’

‘You must be joking. I can’t be lazy. I’m an angel!’

‘I know what you are! Listen, the only way I can sell this downstairs is if I say I have been stopping you from working.’

‘But you could just lie in your reports,’ Aziraphale pleaded.

‘Ha! As if they won’t notice miracles going on. This is not going to work, angel. Imagine I get a visit from Hastur because I haven’t been evildoing-ing according to instructions. Can you imagine what will they do to me if they find me with you? And what they’ll do to you?’

‘Do you get visits often?’ Aziraphale asked, with a strange longing in his voice. ‘My lot rarely comes down here. Normally they just ask me to go up, or they send notes.’

‘I wouldn’t say “often”. Mostly I get notes, but sometimes they come up here,’ Crowley said, surprised to hear Aziraphale sad. ‘It’s totally possible.’

Aziraphale looked at the little boats sailing against the clear blue sky. Then, in the sweetest voice Crowley had ever heard, he asked:

‘Crowley dear, what would you say is more likely, that you get a visit from Hastur or that that human family finds me?’

‘Uh.. er…’

‘Answer me!’

‘Hu-Humans,’ Crowley said, swallowing.

‘See! I’m sticking with you. Only for three or four days, I promise. Then I’ll be gone and you won’t see me again. This is a well-to-do family, surely they don't dare to move around your circles.' Aziraphale stood up too. He was adamant.

'My circles! What the Heavens are implying?'

‘Come on, show me where do you normally eat. This whole thing is making me hungry.’

‘Oh, now you want to eat!’

‘Do you remember the last time? We had oysters!’ Aziraphale smiled at the memory of Petronius’ restaurant.

‘How can I forget the first time an angel tempted a demon?’

‘What! I haven’t ever done such a thing! You’re saying nonsense.’

‘If you say so,’ Crowley laughed. ‘You know what? You’re right, I think it’s my turn to tempt you with some food. I’m sure I’ll find something of your liking.’

Having said this, they climbed down the wall and walked along the roads parallel to it. These were the fishermen's quarters, and if fishermen knew something — apart from fishing — it was how to enjoy their time: in _tabernas_.

It wasn’t that Crowley frequented these places much, contrary to Aziraphale’s belief. However, when he first moved to Byzantium — once Constantine declared it to be the future New Rome of the Empire — when the city was a mess with works, renovations, building palaces and monuments, baths and temples, these fishermen’s quarters had been a comforting spot where to chill out after a long day of evil devising and tampering with city plans.

Crowley took Aziraphale to one of the many taverns. The demon loathed to admit it but, the angel had been right: that upper class family of humans would never come here. The tavern was full of very drunk and loud men who were too eager to pick a fight.

They sat at a table in the corner. Crowley ordered an assortment of foodstuffs and wine, and said: ‘I’m sure in _your_ circles you’re used to eating meat and vegetables. Down here people can’t afford those, but I think you’ll like this, angel.’

The barmaid served them a watery wine and some pies and cakes. They didn’t have to actually speak to agree that the weak wine should be miraculously transformed into a stout Macedonian red wine. A glance between them had been sufficient.

‘These are delectable!’ Aziraphale was delighted. ‘What are these?’

‘ _En tyritas plakountas_. Honeyed cheese pies. And those little ones are _koptoplakous_. You’ll love them — they have plenty of nuts and honey.’

‘What other sweets do you recommend?’ the angel asked, helping himself to a second sweet cheese pie.

Crowley ordered every sweet dish on the menu, and some more the cook himself didn’t know they had in the pantry. They also got drunk — very drunk. When the tavern closed, Crowley had to carry Aziraphale out.

‘Are you ok?’ Crowley asked, concerned, as the angel kept slithering away from his arms.

‘Better than ever!’ Aziraphale said, slouching but cheerful.

‘Where will you stay for the night?’

‘Stay?’

‘Yes. Don’t you have a place here?’

‘Oh, a house! Yes, I have a small one.’

But he couldn’t possibly stay there, could he? The annoying humans could find him! And he wouldn’t go to Crowley’s place, oh no, that would be too much, Gabriel wouldn’t approve of it at all. Neither would he approve of anything he was doing right now, of course he wouldn’t, but he wasn’t here to watch him, right? Oh, maybe he could go… but, no, he wouldn’t. Instead, he forced Crowley to stay awake walking around the city.

First, they climbed the wall again, to look at the ocean and the stars.

‘Angel, do you remember the day we met? We were standing on a wall, not unlike this one,’ Crowley recalled. ‘A vast desert was in front of us then - now, the vast ocean. Two humans ran away from our kind, and now you're running away from humans.’

‘And you’re accompanying me,’ Aziraphale said, nervously looking at the demon on his left. ‘What a turn of events!’

‘Why did you have to intervene? That boy’s problems aren’t yours. Why do you care?’ Crowley had been wanting to ask about it since the angel told him what had happened.

‘Oh, I don’t know really… You may think I’m silly but... I could feel their love, Crowley,’ Aziraphale struggled to find words to explain what compelled him to act. ‘I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing about it. I thought, maybe I can make his family understand that there’s nothing wrong with love. Come on, who doesn’t like love? Humans do, the entire planet feels loved. But they only care about what people say, about family connections, about money,...’ the angel’s voice grew more and more frustrated as he spoke.

‘What humans feel for money is love too,’ Crowley said.

‘That’s greed! A sin!’

‘Well, lust is also a sin, and human love reeks with lust.’

‘Leave it. I don’t expect you to understand love,’ Aziraphale retorted.

Crowley didn’t like that reply. He thought he understood everything: how Heaven and Hell worked, how humans worked, pretty well and definitely better than Aziraphale. But he didn’t want to spend the rest of the night with a moody angel, so he changed the topic.

‘What would you say to a boat ride? I kind of always wanted to sail,’ Crowley suggested.

‘A boat ride, now? Where will we get it from?’ Crowley smiled. The angel had been successfully distracted from his gloomy thoughts.

‘Leave that to me,’ he said.

They left the wall and walked to the nearest pier. There, a couple of men were sleeping, covered by thin blankets. Crowley tugged the blanket of one of the men, who opened his eyes lazily.

‘What time is it?’ the man said in a yawn.

‘I need a boat. How much is the rent?’ Crowley asked.

‘A boat? Now? It will be… 50 bronze coins per day, sir.’

‘Here, have a solidus,’ said the demon, miracling a gold coin freshly minted from the air. ‘It’ll be enough till I return it.’

‘Surely, sir. Take this one,’ the man eagerly took the coin and pointed at a boat tied next to him on the pier. Then, he covered himself with the blanket and went back to sleep, unsure whether what had just happened was real or whether he was still dreaming.

They hopped onto the boat, untied it, and magically drifted along the city. The boat rocked softly as it went on their command, always on safe waters. The summer night’s breeze blew sweetly, and they watched the stars discussing their different names in the different places they had been to, tracing back the stars’ original names from the time when they had helped make them. Undisturbed and alone, they felt completely secure.

The morning surprised them still on the boat — still talking. The first sun rays lit the sky from the east, before the sun itself made its appearance at the other side of the strait. It lay its rays on the city, tinging its white buildings in a light pink colour. It was wonderful.

‘Let’s get back and have breakfast,’ Aziraphale said, and so they did.

***

During the day, they hid in libraries, in overgrown gardens and in taverns. They would eat the simplest fares and drink the best wines. Every night they would go to the pier, untie the boat they had rented and go into the sea.

It was the early morning of the fifth day, and Aziraphale wasn’t as drunk anymore, at least not with alcohol — he had spent four days side by side with Crowley. He was sitting on the boat, looking at the sunrise.

‘You know, Crowley, you’re not as bad as I thought. I mean, you’re still a demon, but a nice one, I would say.’ Aziraphale said.

‘Shhh! Don’t say that!’ Crowley looked around, although he knew they were alone in the middle of the sea. ‘I’m terrifying, spine-chilling, and dangerous.’

‘What I meant was, if it was possible for a demon to be nice, that demon would be you.’

‘Impossible, angel. Think about it: if demons could be nice, why would there be angels?’

‘You’ve got a point, dear.’

Aziraphale had promised he would only stick around Crowley for four days, tops. However, he found making excuses to extend his stay easy. For one thing, he couldn’t possibly use his powers against humans — after all, they both had agreed he was the nice one — he had to wait a little longer, that was all, until he could be absolutely safe. In exchange, he traded Crowley’s patience for the best wines, which he miracled in their rented boat to drink together and toast to the stars.

At night, they would pass the time making lists: lists of places they had been on Earth, places they would like to go but hadn’t visited yet, places where to hide the next day, lists of their favourite things on Earth, and of their least favourite ones. They wouldn’t say it, but the favourite-things-on-Earth list included the fact that the other one was on Earth too — however, instead of saying it out loud, they quietly took a sip of wine every time they thought of saying it, which was somewhat often. None of them kept count of who was miracling the wine, but somehow they never ran out of it.

Two weeks later, Aziraphale had become an expert at making excuses to stay with Crowley. Despite his initial reluctance to indulge in sloth, the truth was that he hadn’t done any work, nor any miracle, nor paperwork at all, nothing. It was a holiday.

Crowley had sent a note once, on the first week’s Friday, but it had been full of exaggerations related to a job done the previous week. He wouldn’t admit it, not even to himself, but he was enjoying the angel’s company. He didn’t struggle to find reasons for the angel to leave and go back to his regular life. By now, the family’s anger had probably subsided, he thought, but he didn’t mention the fact. He would merely nod every time Aziraphale suggested staying with him a little longer, one more day, one more night.

Three weeks passed before finally Crowley let his common sense speak: ‘Angel, I have to get back to work. And so do you. Really. Tomorrow. I’m sure the family has already forgotten about you.’ He said it in his most serious voice, sitting on the boat side by side Aziraphale, both of them looking at the stars. ‘I can’t work while I’m with you.’

Aziraphale was well aware that he had extended his welcome longer than he first intended, longer than it was appropriate, and longer than it was advisable. The problem was that he really liked the way things were and he didn’t want to change anything. He tried to think of any reason, any argument, anything at all that would change Crowley’s mind. However much he racked his brain, he couldn’t come up with anything.

So he kept silent.

The demon was right, Aziraphale thought, that was why he couldn’t come up with any reason to stay. At least, not any reason related to the original problem. Not only was he stalling the demon’s evil work — no damage done — but he wasn’t doing any good either! Resolved, he turned around to face Crowley and said: ‘Fine. I’ll let you work. Would you accompany me to my place? Just to make sure it’s safe. Afterwards, we’ll part our ways.’

‘Angel, it’s safe… Really, I…’ Crowley turned to reply, but Aziraphale’s eyes shut him up. He could see perfectly in the dark. The angel’s blue eyes shone brighter than any star he had been looking at a second ago.

They gazed at each other. None of them dared to stir. For a while, they could only think about how remarkable the other was.

Crowley thought how soft the angel was, how caring. He was supposed to guard humans, keep them under surveillance and protect them if necessary, but he went way beyond his duties - and also way below them. He loved Earth, he enjoyed human things, he enjoyed himself. He was capable of doing things just because they made him happy, not because he was ordered to do them or because they were related to his obligations. He wasn’t at all like the other angels: he wasn’t kind only to humans, but also to him, a demon. That wasn’t out of duty at all, but of nature. Aziraphale was unapologetically soft, courageously sympathetic, thoughtlessly helpful, and genuinely hedonistic. He was a natural. He was just perfect — unlike himself, a pathetic minor demon, a coward, who hid his inadequacy as laziness, who definitely wasn’t worthy of being looked at as Aziraphale was looking at him right now under the starry sky, with those glistening eyes and those barely parted lips. He could be destroyed right there, at that very moment, Crowley thought, and he would die happy.

Aziraphale thought how audacious and provocative the demon was, how daring and intense. Not only had he defied Heaven to defend his beliefs — even if he didn’t agree with them, he had to grant him that much — but he had defied Hell as well for the last three weeks, protecting and humouring him, a pathetic angel who had been demoted to Earth because he had been so useless in Heaven. He hadn’t been happy when he was assigned to Earth: no angel wanted to go, but at least that way he didn’t had to suffer the other angels’ smug faces. Not too often at least, although he longed to suffer them a bit more often. He missed Heaven, but up there no one cared about him. He would only be called up to be reprimanded. Otherwise, he just got notes. Notes and notes and, oh, memos! How lonely he had felt, until now. Spending so many days with Crowley had been amazing. No wonder high ranked demons as Hastur visited him often on Earth: he was so much fun to be with. He was perfect, while he was completely unworthy of being looked at as Crowley was looking at him right now under the starry sky, with those blazing golden eyes and those barely trembling lips. He wished they could stay like that forever.

They were still looking into each other’s eyes when the first sun rays appeared in the east. It was then when they noticed that the boat was rocking dangerously. They had unwittingly let it drift to the open sea. The rising waves woke them from their reverie.

‘Will you accompany me to my place, then?’ asked Aziraphale. Crowley gave the slightest nod, as if he was afraid that moving an inch would break the spell they were into. Aziraphale had a similar thought, because he immediately miracled them in his house, unconcerned about the rented boat. His house was but a tiny shack with just two rooms: a kitchen and a bedroom, separated by a curtain.

Aziraphale pulled the curtain, grabbed Crowley’s hand to make sure he followed and then entered the bedroom. In it there were a small table, a wooden bed, a mattress and soft white cotton linens. Still holding hands they stood there, looking first at the bed, then at each other.

‘See? Everything’s fine. You’ll be fine,’ Crowley said.

Aziraphale sighed and squeezed the demon’s hand.

‘These last few days with you have been… Well, the best days of my entire existence. They have, how can I say, opened my eyes. Crowley, I…I..’

‘Hush! Don’t say it, angel,’ the demon interrupted swiftly.

‘Do you know what I was about to say?’ Aziraphale leaned towards Crowley.

‘I may or may not know it, but I think we’re safer if you don’t say it. You could be...at risk.’

Aziraphale tilted his head: ‘Me? What risk? And you? You’re as much in danger as I am.’

‘Me? I’m already fallen,’ Crowley said. ‘But you…’

‘I cannot fall for this, dear,’ the angel said with confidence, now holding both of Crowley’s hands. ‘If I could, that would have happened already.’

‘What are you saying?’ the demon asked.

‘You just told me not to say it, dear,’ Aziraphale teased.

‘I’m worried about you, idiot!’ Crowley tried to free himself from the angel’s grasp, but he wouldn’t let go. Instead, he held him even tighter.

‘I know. I know,’ he said. ‘Don’t go just yet.’ Aziraphale’s voice was soothing and pleading, and Crowley couldn’t resist. He felt powerless and weak — he just wanted Aziraphale to… well, he wasn’t sure what he exactly wanted Aziraphale to do, but definitely to do something — something as hedonistic as possible.

The angel might had read his mind, because he pulled the demon into his arms. His hand started caressing the hair strands falling over Crowley’s forehead — it was so soft between his fingers. Seeing that he didn’t protest, the angel dared to keep caressing, his hand moving a bit further every time, towards the demon’s nape. He stopped his hand there. In an impulse, Aziraphale brushed his nose against Crowley’s nose, his lips against Crowley’s lips. Then, he pressed on and closed his eyes.

Aziraphale felt as if a hell fire had lit in his lips and spread towards the entirety of his material body. It burned inwards, touching the fringes of his spiritual, ethereal being and melting them. Crowley gasped and broke contact. He was about to speak, about to protest, about to say something earnest regarding the risks of what they were doing. He opened his mouth to explain to the angel all his reasonable and realistic arguments about the danger they were putting themselves in, but he couldn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. Aziraphale was clever, already knew everything. However, the way the angel looked at him left no room for uncertainty. It was Aziraphale who actually spoke:

‘Listen, beyond these human bodies and spiritual forms that cage us in rules and expectations and duties and precepts… beyond all these we are something else too, Crowley, and we exist. Why limit ourselves further? Why not exist free?’

Crowley couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but he desperately wanted to. He had already fallen once, for daring to believe he could be free. He swallowed hard, and decided that he could, at least, believe in Aziraphale.

‘And you want to exist free… with me?’ he asked.

‘I do,’ said Aziraphale.

That was all he needed to hear. Crowley grabbed Aziraphale’s head to make sure they would kiss forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kept it mild not to change the warnings/ratings, but if you want to read what happened in Aziraphale's bedroom in more detail I could write it and posted as a different work.


End file.
